


Corporate Miscommunications

by ohnice1



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drama & Romance, F/F, SuperCorp Sunday, Through the end of season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24474265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohnice1/pseuds/ohnice1
Summary: Months after rekindling their friendship, Kara and Lena have a misunderstanding because sarcasm isn't the only thing that doesn't come across well over texts. Post-season 5 one-shot.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 25
Kudos: 449





	Corporate Miscommunications

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt from marvelousbones. You'll find the prompt in the notes at the end, since it sort of gives away the story. 
> 
> Huuuuuge thank you to Kim for beta reading this :) I'm really sorry if you see any weird formatting in here...it looked fine in Google Docs, but pasting into AO3 ruined the formatting. I tried to fix everything I could find.

As a CEO, one comes to expect a certain amount of predictability. For Lena Luthor, nearly every element in her day-to-day life is meticulously planned: exactly when the best time of year was to announce new products or ventures; when she can sneak in a spin class (which is **always** planned in advance and in the calendar with a sufficient buffer before and after); or even at which exact hour of the day she can step out of meeting rooms and into the lab, all of which is thoughtfully summarized by her assistant at the beginning of each day.

Well beyond the minutiae of the day-to-day, her life had always been the epitome of planned, too: with Lex Luthor as a brother, not planning meant being an immeasurable number of steps behind (not to mention the constant game of chess with her mother). The timing of her studies, her move to National City, the rebranding of L-Corp...those things had been meticulously planned and executed precisely in accordance with said plan. Predictable.

When it comes to Kara Danvers, nothing has ever been predictable.

  * Lena moved to National City determined not to make friends; Kara destroyed that plan.
  * Lena befriended Kara determined not to truly let her in; Kara expertly dismantled her walls.
  * Lena allowed herself to admit that Kara actually was her best friend; and Supergirl showed her that she wasn’t.



Kara Danvers, Supergirl, they’re the same, she came to learn. That was the least predictable of all (...but probably not so unpredictable with the benefit of hindsight, she could admit).

So when Lena and Kara, after months of cold distance and rivalry, begin to tread carefully back towards rebuilding their friendship, Lena is 100% prepared for the lack of predictability. She’s thought of every possible scenario. 

  * Movie nights interrupted by urgent Supergirl situations? Totally going to happen! 
  * Kara randomly showing up at her office with somewhat inappropriate timing just to make sure Lena eats? Guaranteed. 
  * Being abducted by an alien that looks like a yellow rhinoceros because it saw Lena and Supergirl talking once and realized she might be a good hostage? Really not beyond the realm of possibility.



But, well, what she didn’t account for is that sometimes, when it comes to Kara, the unpredictable element is Lena herself. Looking back at the situation that forced her to even admit that she realizes it could have been attributed to fate if she were the type of person to buy into that sort of thing.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon like any other, and she’s sitting in a meeting with the corporate communications team discussing the next day’s publication of the Q3 financial results when a faint _buzz_ on her wrist lets her know she’s gotten a text.

Kara Danvers:  
_Happy Hump Day! Hope you’re having a better (hair) day than me!_

She allows herself a slight eye roll at the use of the phrase “Hump Day,” which Kara knows she finds loathsome, as she scrolls down to see a miniaturized version of the selfie accompanying the text: Kara attempting to drink from a Noonan’s coffee cup while her overgrown bangs fall over the lid. Lena smiles faintly; Kara had decided to grow out her bangs again after she (belatedly, if you ask Lena) realized they were a little too distinct for both her and Supergirl to have, and while they normally slide easily behind her ears or into a clip now, Kara clearly saw an opportunity to make Lena laugh a little at her expense. 

Predictable.

Not wanting to use her phone and draw away from the carefully prepared comms presentation, but feeling somehow compelled to reply, she quickly swipes a reply on her watch. _I love your hair :)_ will be enough.

“Ms. Luthor?” The voice of the presenter breaks her reverie, its tone clearly implying it’s not the first time she’s been addressed. Mid-message, she covers the watch face with her palm to dim the screen and returns her complete focus to the meeting; she’ll reply later. 

Moments later, a significantly longer _buzzzzzz_ lets her know her phone is ringing, but having just been caught not paying attention and trusting that, if it’s urgent, the caller will try her office and reach her assistant, she keeps her attention on the presentation. 

_Buzz._ Another text. She lifts an eyebrow. Maybe it **is** urgent? She chances a glance at her watch as the alert takes over the screen.

Kara Danvers:  
_Sorry, I know you’re in a meeting (only because you usually are at this time, not because I stalked your calendar or something). Call me later_

The text is punctuated with a red heart.

She suppresses a smirk and writes it off as an apology for a post-text pocket-dial and, by the time the meeting is over, she’s forgotten about it and her unfinished reply.

After the meeting ends and the team has dispersed, satisfied with the plan for their investor call the next day, Lena makes her way back to her office. When she arrives, her assistant is putting on his coat, clearly heading out for the evening; a quick glance at the clock on the wall behind her let her know it was already almost 8 P.M.

“Ms. Luthor! I’m sorry, I tried to wait, but I have a reserv-” he begins defending.

“Go home,” she interjects with an easy smile. “Just because I live in the office doesn’t mean you have to.” He relaxes visibly. “See you tomorrow,” she adds with an air of finality as she moves into her office.

“Good night!” he calls after her.

Just as she reaches her desk and the office door closes with a soft _click_ behind her, she hears the familiar sound of a soft landing on the balcony and catches sight of Kara there, frantically pushing her hair out of her face and moving towards the door.

“Shit,” Lena mutters to herself, momentarily forgetting that Kara absolutely would have heard her. She’d never replied to Kara’s message, the meeting having dragged on for several more hours, and now Kara felt it her duty to either:

  1. Ensure Lena hadn’t been abducted by a yellow rhinoceros alien or other nefarious character
  2. Demand that Lena leave the office and eat dinner because adequate nutrition is important (the more likely scenario)



Predictable. She wasn’t even surprised to see that Kara had flown over as Kara, no suit.

As she makes her way to the door, she looks at her watch, curious to see how many times Kara had tried to reach her, and she stops dead in her tracks a few steps short of the door. Having been so focused on the investor call discussion, Lena hadn’t used her phone or watch for the remainder of the meeting and her message thread with Kara was still open. Just above Kara’s last text (with its red heart staring her down), she could see the faint outline of the message bubble from the last message she sent. She scrolls up.

_I love you_

She immediately realizes that she’d managed to inadvertently send her half-written reply earlier and her stomach knotted itself uncomfortably as she was forced to reckon with the now far-more-likely option 3: Kara was here to have a very awkward conversation with Lena about friendship and love _but not that kind of love._

Kara’s muffled voice comes through the glass. “Lena?” she calls, her face twisted into something largely unreadable but mostly conveying confusion.

Lena quickly shuffles the remaining few steps to the door and opens it, trying desperately to develop a plan of action in the mere seconds that remain before she actually has to say something. She moves aside as she opens the door, allowing Kara to come inside.

“Kara, I’m so sorry, I-”

“Lena, I didn’t think a text was the best-”

They both blurt out opening words simultaneously and stop speaking at the same time, too, and it cuts the tension ever so slightly as they share a short, sort-of-awkward laugh. Kara takes a deep breath and shifts her gaze, grabbing the door (still tightly gripped in Lena’s hand) and closing it behind her as she composes herself to speak. 

“Hi,” Kara says more easily, returning her attention to Lena.

“Hi.”

“I saw your text earlier and I tried to call because I thought that would be better than-”

“I’m so sorry,” Lena interrupts, “I was in the middle of a meeting and-”

This time it’s Kara’s turn to interrupt. “I’ve had all afternoon to think about this so please let me finish or I won’t be able to,” Kara pleads, noting Lena’s demeanor softening as she does so. “I figured you were in a meeting, but when you wrote that, I really wanted to try and call because your feelings are really important to me, way more important than just writing you a text message.” She sees Lena move slightly, as if to speak, but keeps going. “My immediate gut reaction was just to be surprised, of course. We’ve only been talking again for a couple of months and close again for even less,” she trails off, turning away from Lena and wringing her hands as she takes a few steps. Lena wants desperately to explain herself, to put Kara out of her misery and stop her from saying what she surely believes will break Lena’s heart (again), but she knows Kara will get flustered again if she interrupts her after she specifically asked her not to.

“But then I thought about it some more, of course. And, well, I mean, that didn’t take long, which I guess you noticed because I called you pretty much right away and then I texted you when you didn’t answer and,” she stops abruptly, noticing that she’s rambling, and composes herself again. “When I thought about it I knew that I shouldn’t be surprised. That when you said I broke your heart and you were **so hurt** that you made it your life’s mission to use science to stop people from hurting each other…” she trails off, seemingly searching the room for the next words as she frantically glances around, looking at everything but Lena. “Well, I guess I could have known. Or should have known...that it was more than just a friendship for you,” she finishes awkwardly, finally looking at Lena.

Hearing Kara’s words, the wheels in Lena’s head begin to turn chaotically. She did tell Kara that she broke her heart...and she did bite back prefacing that statement with “I loved you,” she recalls bitterly, but she’d never thought to dwell on why she didn’t say it or what **kind** of love that meant (not that **she’d** ever had such friends, but she’d observed plenty of other female friends casually telling one another they loved each other plenty of times). The months that followed were too filled with hurt and anger and total disconnection from Kara to dissect that flash of a feeling any further. Kara’s voice breaks her train of thought.

“And, well, I guess maybe it was the same for me.” Kara’s sentence feels like it comes with a full stop, this time, and her eyes are searching Lena’s for a reaction.

Lena, for her part, tries to keep a neutral expression while she tries to figure out what Kara is saying, but her mouth betrays her before she finishes thinking about it. “It was an accident,” she blurts out.

Kara recoils. “What? Lena, you don’t have to-”

“I mean,” Lena interrupts, “I was typing a reply on my watch so that I wouldn’t be rude in the meeting and accidentally pressed send before I was done.” Seeing Kara’s perplexed expression, she takes a gentle step towards her and continues. “I wanted to say, ‘I love your hair,’” she clarifies, closing the distance between them and pushing an errant lock of hair behind Kara’s ear as if to prove her point.

“Lena…” Kara mutters, tone dripping with disbelief. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” 

“Taking back what you said!”

Lena places a hand on her hip, moving into a defensive position. “I’m...not. I just told you what really happened.”

Kara shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I think you told me you loved me and now you’re scared because I didn’t just say it back immediately, so you want to pretend it never happened.”

“No!” Lena exclaims, adamant. “No,” she continues, this time more gently, “I just-”

“I love you too!” Kara practically yells, punctuating her point with the slightest stamping of her feet on the ground. It’s sort of cute, Lena muses, before the words themselves dawn on her and her eyes grow saucer-wide. She instinctively strolls behind her desk, creating a barrier between herself and Kara.

“You do?” is all she manages to squeak out, her mouth betraying her mind yet again.

“I would have gotten there more eloquently if you’d let me finish,” Kara defends meekly.

“I’m sorry.”

Lena’s not quite sure what to say now because she’s not even sure how she feels. Does she love Kara? Ugh, of course she does. Does she love Kara **like that**? Her mind is moving a mile a minute but the only concrete thought she can form is, _Don’t break Kara’s heart like she broke yours._

Kara’s body language is so meek, so uncomfortable, it **almost** makes Lena feel a little bit vindicated for not noticing that she was Supergirl sooner. Lena moves back around the desk, taking slow, calculated steps to close the distance with Kara and gently grabbing one hand in both of her own. _Don’t break her heart_.

“Let’s go out,” Lena offers.

Kara straightens up just the tiniest bit. “What?” she nearly whispers, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“Uh,” Lena stutters. She’d hoped to buy time with her vague wording to just wrap her head around what was happening. Get some **control**. “Let’s...go out. You and me. To dinner. Now. We can talk about this.” Her sentence is punctuated by an audible growl of her stomach.

Kara smirks at the sound, a laugh catching just at the back of her throat. “Okay.”

Wordlessly, Lena drops Kara’s hand, grabs her purse and jacket, and returns to Kara’s side. “Let’s go.”

It’s a little awkward, she notices, as they take the long elevator ride downstairs and move out into the fresh night air without saying a thing to each other. She’s acutely aware that her heart rate is ever-so-slightly increased and she’s sure Kara hears it, too, the thought of which makes her feel like it’s going to pound out of her chest. As if on queue, Kara places a gentle hand on her upper arm and stops, turning so that they’re facing each other.

“Is this a date?” Kara asks, sounding almost as if she’s simply wondering aloud.

Meanwhile, Lena’s pounding heart stops for a second. Obviously she’d thought of that but hadn’t bothered to think of the actual answer.

“I can hear your heartbeat, you know,” Kara almost whispers, like she’s sharing a secret.

“I know,” Lena manages to breathe out, eyes fixated on a cigarette butt lying on the ground a few feet away. If she could reprogram some of the L-Corp robots to suck up litter on the ground…

“Is it?” Kara reiterates, interrupting Lena’s usually successful tactic of fixating on work in order to avoid her actual personal life. 

_Don’t break her heart_.

“Do you want it to be?” Lena procrastinates lamely.

Kara huffs. “I just told you that I loved you, too. What do you think?” Her voice is tinged with frustration.

“Kara,” Lena begins. A light gust of wind comes, dislodging a section of Kara’s hair from behind her ear and into her face again. Without thinking, Lena reaches up, gently moving it back in place. She hadn’t noticed that Kara was still holding her arm - **that** arm - until she felt Kara’s hand move up and cover her own, pressing it into the side of her face. She felt the involuntarily, sharp intake of breath deep in her stomach and was certain that her heart actually stopped this time. 

Suddenly, Lena didn’t need to think about it anymore. This moment wasn’t only predictable, it was inevitable. 

“Yes. It’s a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! This is the first fic I've written in 7 years...Let me know if you'd like to see more of this. I don't do well with multi-chapter fics, but I might consider a series of one-shots. 
> 
> And, as promised, the prompt from marvelousbones:
> 
> Person A means to send a message to Person B saying “I love your hair” but accidentally sends “I love you”. It turns out B loves them back. Not wanting to break the latter’s heart, A asks them out.


End file.
